The present invention concerns load-controlled brake compensators for motor vehicles allowing the division of braking between the front axle and the rear axle to be modified as a function of the load on the vehicle assisted in this way.
These brake compensators are well known to persons skilled in the art and their operating modes will not be described here. In a conventional manner, such a compensator includes a fixed part solidly attached to the chassis comprising at least one compensating valve provided with a pivotingly mounted control lever of which one end is associated with an axle via a pre-loaded spring device whose length is preset by means of a temporary strut before one of its ends is fixed to this axle, the other end of the spring device being solidly attached to a rod sliding in an opening made at the end of the lever.
Such a compensator is for example described in FR-A-2,564,397. This compensator, however, is slow and awkward to fit in place in the vehicle that it is to equip. This is because the end hook of the spring device has to be arranged in an appropriate eyelet before removal of the temporary strut and the distance between the end of the lever and the hook has to be such that there is no risk of the spring device shaking when the vehicle moves, especially when empty, and that the lever stays in the appropriate position with respect to the compensator valve. To this end, according to the above-mentioned document, the spring device ends in a threaded rod and, after positioning of the assembly on the vehicle and before removal of the temporary strut, a nut is screwed onto the rod until it immobilizes the assembly. This operation is difficult to carry out and cannot easily be automated.